Public Employee Press

Other Voices

Josh Barnett
The high price of the free market

Privatization is killing the city and devastating workers everywhere.

Before becoming a city employee, I had a job in an engineering firm that had a contract designing toll booths for the New York City Transit Authority.

But I didn't know anything about designing toll booths. So, the TA engineers would teach me. It was a huge waste of time and money.

The Transit Authority contracted my engineering firm because it believed that would save money. But that's the myth - that private contractors do the work better and cheaper, when in fact the opposite is true. Privatization is actually killing the city and devastating workers everywhere.

The city pays for new stadiums to go up, but hospitals shut down. Billion-dollar office towers are built with tax breaks while the subways deteriorate for lack of funding.

Out of desperation museums and parks chase after private donors. Libraries are forced to sell their building to get the first floor of a new luxury condo tower built there.

The New York City Housing Authority is bringing in market rate housing built on playgrounds, parking lots and open space to raise revenue, putting public housing firmly on the road to privatization, higher rents and evictions.

Even in the midst of austerity, government somehow finds the money to outsource vital services.

At NYCHA, despite an on-going deficit, construction management services have been farmed out since 2004. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent over and above what it would cost to pay full-time, in-house workers. We sit next to consultants making twice what we do, and we have to teach them on top of it.

The community and senior centers were given over to private non-profits with contracts that can always be cancelled, denying residents vital programs. Even basic janitorial services are being outsourced.

Bringing in private investment for public service never ends well. Charter schools are consistently shown to underperform. For-profit prisons nationally have a huge record of abuses. The federal government lost billions during the Iraq War when military and other work was farmed out to Blackwater and Halliburton.

And are the consultants efficient? Look at the CityTime and 911 software debacles. The city lost hundreds of millions of dollars because of those contracted-out projects.

City programs like 421A give tax breaks to for-profit housing developers, and giant firms like JP MorganChase are given tax subsidies to build in New York City.

Corporate profits are at an all-time high, but corporate taxes have fallen from 33 percent of the federal budget in 1952 to under 10 percent today. The money is there, but it's flowing up, not trickling down.

It's all part of the race to the bottom for the 99 percent. Public transportation, housing, education, health care, libraries, schools, and sanitation, aren't supposed to make money. They're supposed to make our lives livable.

We can't buy into the myth of the efficient marketplace, and we can't accept politicians who do. Otherwise we'll go on paying the high price of the free market.

Josh Barnett, an Architect 2, is a member of Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375.